Offshore Financial Services Databook 2003 Published

by Philip Morton, Investors Offshore.com

03 July 2003

Market research firm, Researchandmarkets.com on Monday announced the launch of its new Offshore Financial Services Databook, a quantitative study of the offshore investment market focusing primarily on European-owned assets.

The 2003 edition of the Databook looks at 13 major offshore locations holding European assets, and provides information on various aspects of those holdings, including:

- The sizes of offshore deposits and offshore funds from 1998 to 2002;

- The division of offshore deposits and funds into retail and institutional assets in 2001, and;

- The amount of those deposits and funds sourced from France, Germany, Spain, the UK, the Nordic region, Benelux, the US, and Asia Pacific in 2001.

The report also forecasts the likely amounts of deposits and funds destined for each offshore centre in fiscal 2003-04.

In a statement following the release of the Offshore Financial Services Databook, Researchandmarkets.com announced that in 2002, the offshore market declined for the first time in five years, with total offshore deposits and mutual funds standing at EUR3,612.7 billion, compared with EUR3,691.5 billion the previous year.

The market research firm also revealed that:

'Investors' choice of offshore deposit destination is related to proximity of those centers to the investor's home market. Europeans accounted for 84% of all deposits in [the] Dublin IFSC and 72% of deposits in [the] Isle of Man, US investors accounted for 62% of all deposits in the Bahamas, and Asian investors accounted for 48% of all deposits in Hong Kong.'

The statement concluded by predicting that offshore deposits will grow by 2.8% compounded annually in the 2003-04 period.

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